


The Ides

by Winter_of_our_Discontent



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dubious Consent, Eldritch Abomination Cecil, First Time, Goes AU Prior to "One Year Later", M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Other, Tentacle Sex, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_of_our_Discontent/pseuds/Winter_of_our_Discontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This last broadcast was odd, though. In the almost a year Carlos had lived here… which was hard to believe and not just because the sun had a tendency to set at the wrong time and sometimes Thursdays… skipped… <i>(“Listeners, it’s like my mother used to say,” </i>Cecil had once said. <i>“Time flies. And so do badgers. So you’ll probably want to take an umbrella with you today.”)</i> </p><p>Cecil had never <i>not</i> been on the radio. Even when he’d clearly had a cold and his congestion had made an utter yet strangely adorable mess of all of his glottal consonants. Cecil was The Voice of Night Vale, and in this town that was more reliable than the sunrise, death, or taxes. Well, maybe not taxes. Even if this year Carlos had to pay them in formaldehyde jars full of rats. (He was reasonably certain he hadn’t paid that way in previous years, but then, he wasn’t an accountant.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_The Ides of November are almost upon us, dear listeners, and you know what **that** means!_

The problem, Carlos thought, only half listening to the broadcast as he carefully fed the bacterial cultures the human blood that for some strange reason was the only thing they could live on, was that the other listeners probably did know exactly what Cecil meant. He knew from half-remembered cultural anthropology electives in undergrad that it was common for a community to have its own linguistic signifiers borne of shared culture and experience, but Night Vale took that tendency, as they did everything else, to absurd extremes.

To Carlos, as an outsider, it often felt like they were speaking another language, and not just when they were actually speaking another language. (If he’d known how useful a working knowledge of Simplified Eldritch would have been, he’d have taken that instead of German.)

And unfortunately, what you didn’t know in Night Vale could kill you. What you did know in Night Vale could also kill you, especially if they found out that you knew it and you weren’t on the approved list of people actually allowed to know it. 

_Any affected members of the citizenry who have not already taken appropriate measures are encouraged to report to the holding cells in the Department of Health and Preventable Epidemics. We don’t want a repeat of last year! By which I mean a repeat of the events of last year in a metaphorical sense and not an actual time dilation caused by a spontaneous rip in the fabric of space-time that causes us to be forced to actually relive the events of the last year. Like last year._

It was a fascinating place to work, and not just because the city council had just voted to make the second law of thermodynamics, and pecans, illegal on alternate Mondays. Carlos was really going to miss the pecans. He’d already given up pistachios once he found out that in Night Vale, they were still red, but weren’t dyed.

_I will, of course, be remaining secured within the confines of this broadcasting studio, where thanks to the new locks on the door, installed by our intern Monica, as well as various other security measures, some of which are secret, I will only be as much danger to the population of Night Vale as any other citizen might be, given that any of us, any of us, might find ourselves at any moment finally overwhelmed by the vast emptiness of our short, pitiable lives, and snap, going on a murderous spree that will only end when we are finally overwhelmed by the Sheriff’s Secret Police or one of Night Vale’s many community-spirited vigilante groups._

Carlos paused in the middle of squeezing out the pipette, causing the culture to howl for its meal in a loud tone of impotent and unholy rage. 

_And now, the weather._

There was no reasoning with the bacteria when it started acting like that, so he finished feeding it and dropped the used pipette in the biohazard receptacle. It was almost full, and he made a note on the dry erase board reminding himself to put the receptacle outside the back door before he left the lab, whenever that might be. Municipal services would have it emptied by tomorrow morning, which Carlos appreciated. He was less fond of the inevitable sticky saliva residue he’d have to rinse off before he could use it again, but you had to take what you could get around here. At least it was fast. And earned him a very useful twenty-five percent discount on the lab’s utility bill.

Carlos took his dinner out of the lab’s designated non-work freezer and threw it in the microwave to cook as the weather finished playing.

_….that’s the blue if you’re Chosen, and the red if you’re **Chosen.** The Night Vale Department of Health and Preventable Epidemics assures me that it’s absolutely supposed to taste like that, so here’s hoping you like the taste of pineapple and veal! I think we can all agree it’s a nice change from last year’s bubblegum flavor, so thanks, Health Department. If you’re in neither category, I recommend orange juice, because frankly, you’re probably not getting enough Vitamin C in your diet. Drink up, because though your survival is unlikely at the best of times, and let’s be fair, listeners, it’s never the best of times, is it, you stand absolutely no chance if you fail to take these simple precautions._

_And one final thought, listeners, before I go on my annual enforced weeklong hiatus: where I am going, I will be unable to remember all of you, or even who or what I am, what day it is, what a day is, or any actual concept of time. But rest assured if I were capable of doing so, you would be in my thoughts, Night Vale. All of you, but especially you, Perfect, Sweet Carlos. Be safe, this week._

Carlos stopped, as he always did, when Cecil said his name. He’d been teased about it at first by the other researchers when they’d first come to Night Vale, about his ‘strange boyfriend on the radio’ and his obsession with his ‘perfect hair.’ He’d actually gotten rid of the radio in the lab out of frustration, which had only made the broadcasts come through the oscilloscope (he’d tried the same experiment at his house, briefly, for science, and the broadcast had come out of the toaster. Along with his toast, which was really odd, since he’d put in English muffins). He’d given up after a day and returned the radio to the lab. The other researchers had quit teasing him about it all pretty soon afterwards, though that was because by then they’d all either died or gone missing. 

Carlos kept sending emails telling his supervisors to quit sending people out here, please, no, _you’re sending them to their deaths,_ but was not sure the emails ever got through. That, or the temptation to get rid of unwanted grad students or post-docs was just too strong. He kept sending the emails, just the same. He also kept the toaster, because while it didn’t always give him the same bread product he’d put in, it did perfectly toast and pre-butter whatever did come out.

_And remember, listeners, out of darkness emerges light. Out of death, rebirth. And, out of the gaping maw of the eternal unknowable, additional rows of rotating teeth. So, so many teeth. Gleaming, in the night._

_Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight._

In a town where nothing made sense, Cecil remained one of the biggest mysteries. As far as Carlos could tell, he was harmless (mostly harmless, his mind supplied helpfully) and had no hidden agenda. In fact, he had the least hidden agenda imaginable, given his tendency to go off on verbal tangents and share so much personal information with a town that couldn’t help but listen to him.

At the same time, his not-remotely-hidden infatuation with Carlos made Carlos uneasy in a way that even Night Vale’s dog park hadn’t quite managed to do. Because he was just… him. Average looks, slightly above average brains, a wardrobe that consisted entirely of things to be worn under lab coats. The few relationships he’d had has consisted of several low-key affairs he’d been the one to awkwardly initiate or had just fallen into; he couldn’t remember anyone ever being interested in him first, especially so strongly and so quickly. And that kind of attention made him self-conscious, made him feel like Night Vale’s other residents must be looking at him and wondering why exactly Cecil thought he was so special every time they saw him (and weren’t actively in the process of running for their lives, obviously, he wasn’t that self-absorbed).

The worst of it was… the absolute worst, would-deny-if-being-tortured-but-okay-not-all-that-tortured (he was a scientist, after all, which wasn’t a profession generally known for building up pain tolerances) was that he actually… well, he liked Cecil. A hard to quantify amount dwelling somewhere above Craigslist Missed Connections but well below Doodle-their-name-with-a-banned-writing-implement. 

Because Cecil was… well, he was hard to describe if you weren’t looking directly at him, and even then he could be a bit fuzzy around the edges. Not short, not tall, not fat, not thin… Right now, alone in his lab, Carlos couldn’t have so much as said was Cecil’s hair color was. Lightish, he was pretty sure. But he remembered thinking Cecil was attractive when he had seen him. And his voice on the radio… well, he could hardly be blamed for liking Cecil’s voice. It was a melted chocolate sort of voice, one of the other scientists had once called it, a phrase that horrified him in its scientific inaccuracy even as he couldn’t argue against its obvious descriptive merits. 

But he also couldn’t deny that there was a quantifiable effect on his heart rate when Cecil said his name in that voice. Not while his lab came equipped with a somehow-still-operational heart monitor, at any rate. 

He liked Cecil’s off-air voice too, the one he had when he was actually talking to someone (okay, Carlos. When he was talking to Carlos.) It was quieter, less self-assured, and less wordy. Less all-knowing. Like he was hearing Cecil Baldwin and not The Voice of Night Vale.

Unfortunately, if he ever tried to Scientist Up and actually… well, something… with Cecil, it was bound to end badly. Because if they actually spent real time together Cecil was bound to realise that Carlos, actual, boring Carlos, was so much less than the Carlos the Scientist of his broadcasts. That he wasn’t perfect and neither was his hair and the whole thing was bound to end in disappointment. And then he’d have inadvertently hurt a guy he genuinely cared about, and have lost one of the few pleasant and non-lethal things Night Vale had to offer.

And he’d miss hearing his name in the broadcasts, a bit. It was nice to know sometimes that someone was thinking of him. Someone who would notice if one day he vanished into a spontaneously appearing blood-filled sinkhole, and not just because he’d probably have to announce it to the town.

So he made sure to only call Cecil for Reasons of Science and never personal ones, and kept himself quite busy investigating, documenting, and not infrequently running from the myriad unexplained happenings of Night Vale. 

And of course, he kept listening to the radio. Not that he could avoid that. Not _here._

This last broadcast was odd, though. In the almost a year he’d lived here… which was hard to believe and not just because the sun had a tendency to set at the wrong time and sometimes Thursdays… skipped… _(“Listeners, it’s like my mother used to say,”_ Cecil had once said. _“Time flies. And so do badgers. So you’ll probably want to take an umbrella with you today.”)_ Cecil had never _not_ been on the radio. Even when he’d clearly had a cold and his congestion had made an utter yet strangely adorable mess of all of his glottal consonants. Cecil was The Voice of Night Vale, and in this town that was more reliable than the sunrise, death, or taxes. Well, maybe not taxes. Even if this year he’d had to pay them in formaldehyde jars full of rats. (He was reasonably certain he hadn’t paid that way in previous years, but then, he wasn’t an accountant.) 

A week without being able to reset his clocks using the start of Cecil’s broadcast as a reference point. 

A week without Cecil providing vital information on significant happenings around town.

A week without Cecil’s voice.

A week without Cecil.

But Cecil hadn’t seemed worried, and he’d said it was just some sort of annual event. So it would be fine. He’d just be gone a week, and it wasn’t as though there wasn’t plenty of Science that needed doing in the meantime.

It would be _fine._ Even by non-Night Vale standards.


	2. Chapter 2

Carlos lasted two days. In his defense, it hadn’t helped that the station’s replacement for Cecil’s broadcast was an hour of the humming of fluorescent track lighting, interspersed with flies getting too close and frying themselves.  Or perhaps it was five minutes of the same fly, looped.

 

The second day he headed outside during the broadcast. He knew he’d end up hearing it anyway, but it echoed in the lab and made the space created by the absence of Cecil’s voice feel even larger.

 

The town was quiet. It was not the quiet of a storm’s aftermath, or even the expectant hush of something looming on the horizon. It was the quiet of everyone realizing Jehovah’s Witnesses were about to drop by, so they were going to pretend to not be home.

 

It felt like the whole town was playing Hide and Seek. Or at least Hide.

 

He walked over to Big Rico’s, figuring he might as well get his mandated weekly slice while he was out. The door, however, was locked, and bore a neatly printed sign saying “Closed for…” Unfortunately, the rest of the sign saying what it was that the store was in fact closed _for_ had been carefully burnt away.

 

Alright, _now_  Carlos was worried. Officially. Cecil’s show and Big Rico’s being simultaneously unavailable was unheard of, and definitely warranted Scientific Investigation.

 

He needed to go check his readings.

 

“Yoo hoo! Carlos the Scientist!” 

 

Carlos very definitely did not jump at the unexpected noise. In the interest of scientific accuracy it might be noted that he did, however, flinch a bit.

 

“That’s not actually my last… hello, Miss Josie, Erika, Erika,” he said, turning to wave at Old Woman Josie and the two angels flanking her, each carrying grocery bags. “It’s nice… and somewhat surprising, given that the town looks completely abandoned right now… to see you out. But definitely nice.”

 

“You’re a sweet boy,” Josie said, in a tone that made Carlos want to proactively cover his cheeks to prevent possible pinching. “I’m too old to bother with anymore, and it’s so nice to grocery shop when it’s quiet out. No lines. No cashiers either, but I just leave my money on the counter,” she added. “But you’ll be wanting to head to the radio station soon.”

 

“But why? And what’s going on here that everyone’s…”

 

She continued, ignoring him. “And while I’m sure it’s all well and good to play hard to get, you’ve kept the poor boy waiting long enough, don’t you think? You boys may think you invented all of this sort of thing, but I could have taught you a thing or two back in my day.” She winked at him. “You’ve already had your Aquae Vitalis, of course?”

 

“Aquae Vitalis?”

 

“Erika?” she asked, turning to the angel on her left. From out of nowhere it produced a mason jar full of blue liquid, and held it in front of him, all without having visibly moved or dropped any of the groceries.

 

“The blue… I mean, I don’t want to <i>presume</i>, of course, but you’re both so _young_ …”

 

“The blue is fine, I’m sure,” Carlos said, having been taught to be polite to old ladies, especially ones that were accompanied by things that may or may not have been extremely powerful extra-dimensional beings. Besides, he was fond of her muffins. He took the mason jar from the angel and held it up to the light skeptically, careful not to spill it. It was about the consistency and density of whole milk, but was the colour of the sky at twilight, with tiny green and white flecks in it. He lowered it to find the eyes of Old Woman Josie and the angels on him. 

 

“Well go on, then, I need that jar back and we need to be getting back in time for Erika to catch America’s Next Top Model.”

 

The sane thing to do would be to keep the liquid and analyze it, not drink it while reminding oneself that Old Woman Josie seemed generally harmless and to the best of his knowledge had not ever tried to kill anyone. Or at least hadn’t recently done so, because Cecil would probably have said something about it during a broadcast. But then again, the really sane thing to do would be to not have accepted a post-doc in Night Vale, so he’d clearly thrown proper decision making out the window long before this point. Carlos began sipping the liquid, graduating to chugging it once he realized it tasted completely awful and that he needed to empty the glass as quickly as possible while tasting it as little as possible.

 

He thrust the now-empty jar back at the Erika on the left, who made it vanish as quickly as they had made it initially appear, and wiped his blue-edged mouth on the back of his hand. “That was…” like the time he’d had wasabi mixed with melted green tea ice cream after losing an ill-thought out bet in undergrad ”...different.”

 

Old Woman Josie beamed, and Carlos’ cheeks felt phantom pains. “An old family recipe. I’d tell you, but then I’d have to ritually disembowel you on a Tuesday under a gibbous moon.”

 

“That’s alright,” Carlos said. “I’m really not that much of a cook anyway. Well… You’d best be going, then. To watch your show.” 

 

“Say hello to your Cecil for me!” Old Woman Josie called back to him as her group continued their walk home.

 

Carlos waved back politely, smile held tightly in place until she was out of sight. He then made a run for it back to his lab, because his body was now telling him that whatever he’d just imbibed was no longer welcome in his system, and regurgitation was the sort of thing he preferred to do in the privacy of his own bathroom, whenever possible.

 

He made it inside the door before the dry heaves made further running impossible, stumbling and half crawling the last few yards until he he felt the cool bathroom tiles under his hands. 

 

As he hugged the toilet rim with a devotion usually reserved for Science and certain radio broadcasts, the tiny part of his brain not currently preoccupied with bodily functions reminded himself that if whatever he’d eaten was this bad, it was just as well his body was actively working to expel it. 

 

The next hour was unpleasant for all concerned, as it involved continued dry heaves, syrup of Ipecac, and his body’s expulsion of everything that _wasn’t_  a mysterious blue liquid. 

 

When Carlos woke up again, he discovered that six hours had passed and that his mouth tasted as though it had been illegally used as a hazardous waste disposal site. 

 

A few minutes and a quarter of a tube of toothpaste after that he discovered he was now ravenously hungry. And thirsty. 

 

Much, much later on, long after the water cooler, fridge, freezer, cupboards, and hidden candy bar stash in the drawer that Arjun had left behind were all emptied, Carlos would consider (before giving it up as a bad job) trying to calculate just how much he’d eaten based on what was left. It was a calculation made more complicated by the fact that he rarely remembered what he ate on an average day, though that was out of the slightly fugue-ish state he tended towards while working and not because he was suddenly the Very Hungry Scientist. 

 

(He’d also by then noticed some things missing that while technically edible should not by any stretch of the imagination have counted as “food” and decided, Science be damned, that some things really really really ought to remain unknown. And that he’d never really liked fishtanks, anyway.)

 

Clearly something Odd was going on. Odd, but so far it hadn’t been _harmful._  Unpleasant, certainly, and next time Old Woman Josie offered him anything to drink he was going to claim he’d given up liquids for Lent, but… 

 

Cecil was off the air, Big Rico’s closed, the town gone deadly quiet, and he’d just been temporarily knocked out by Old Josie’s distinctly strange moonshine. Were they all connected? If so, how? Maybe she’d just made a giant batch and had been offering it around? And the whole town had decided it was easier to go into hiding than figure out how to politely decline?

 

It was a hypothesis, but it didn’t feel quite right. It was, if anything, not weird _enough_. Which was not a problem Carlos had encountered prior to moving to Night Vale, but he hadn’t outlasted every single other researcher simply by chance. Sometimes, when you didn’t have enough data, you had to go with your gut. And his gut was telling him he needed to go to the radio station to talk to Cecil, to make sure he was alright and see if he could shed some light on current events.

 

...in the interest of complete accuracy, his gut was also telling him that the cactus in the corner would probably taste fine with a bit of sriracha, but _after_  that it was definitely suggesting that a visit to the community radio station was in order.


	3. Chapter 3

What had he been thinking, anyway, accepting Josie’s drink? Skeptical was the third thing a Scientist was. Even if in the past he’d never gotten anything worse than a strong desire that Josie begin using salt in her recipes again. 

Carlos did some quick, soothing math in his head to work out that statistically, making appropriate allowances for sample size and selection bias, Josie’s food was some of the safest in Night Vale. The calculations made him feel better intellectually, though sadly, not physically.

He just needed to get to Cecil. Cecil would know what was going on, Cecil with his velvet voice wrapping around Carlos… and his arms, his arms could wrap around Carlos too, that would be acceptable. Yes, Cecil should certainly provide some form of physical support, since Carlos was feeling so unwell. And from that position, it made the most sense for Cecil to lean in close to Carlos… he was already so close to Carlos, after all… and whisper pertinent information into his ear. His deep, beautiful voice, that reminded Carlos of music he’d never heard and natural wonders he’d only even seen on postcards, inches away from Carlos’ ear, words just to Carlos, just _for_ Carlos. Words of immeasurable beauty because of the lips and breath shaping them. Breath, heated by Cecil’s cardiovascular system, warmed by the very blood passing through the chambers of Cecil’s heart, detected by the nerve endings embedded in the skin of Carlos’ ear and neck. It would ruffle the hair Cecil claimed such fondness for; perhaps some inherent love of order would take note of the disarray and be moved to correct it, Cecil’s long, clever fingers carding through the hair, fingernails scraping gently against Carlos’ scalp as he brought a tenuous order to the chaos of the thick strands.

He was embarrassed to realize he’d become aroused just thinking of contact with Cecil, and then became further mortified because thinking of how ridiculous it was to become aroused by such minor activities had immediately led to consideration of what sort of activities would have legitimately merited such arousal and if he hadn’t had an erection prior to that point he would certainly have had one afterwards.

Carlos felt like a teenager again, when sidebars on famous scientists in the textbook had been enough to stir inappropriate physical reactions. Of all the times for Cecil to be off the air… no. Passively listening to Cecil’s voice right now would have been… incredibly arousing. No, not arousing. Inappropriate. Highly, highly inappropriate. 

...and arousing. Shit.

Maybe he should call first. 

He picked up his phone which, thankfully, had the station’s number as well as Cecil’s personal one in his contacts. He dithered for a moment deciding which of the two he should call; he should probably call the station first, as that was far more professional… but the thought of talking to an intern right now was… highly unappealing. Besides, calling Cecil’s personal number would be far more direct and efficient, and those were probably the seventh and eighth things a Scientist was.

When he heard Cecil’s voice after the ninth ring he felt his body sag with relief. Unfortunately, he then immediately realised it was just Cecil’s voicemail, which was disconcerting in its own right because Cecil always, and that was not hyperbole, there was in fact a hundred percent statistical correlation, Cecil always picked up, always, even if he was on the air at the time, which always made Carlos feel horribly guilty about calling. 

The sudden unquantifiable lump in his chest was enough to cause him to miss most of the subsequent message -- something about bloodstones and horoscopes and the inevitable heat death of the universe -- and then he hears “leave a message after the unbearable silence unless you’re **Steve Carlsburg** in which case you can just hang up right now UGH” followed by the aforementioned unbearable silence. And Carlos was awful at leaving messages, never knew what to say, and it was even worse right now, when the hint of Cecil’s rich voice through the phone was enough to overstimulate his already taxed cardiovascular system.

“Hi Cecil, uhm, this is Carlos, obviously, I’m calling for Science Reasons, except that it’s sort of Personal too, because something’s happening to me but it’s weird and I’m kind of scared… and I know you’re busy right now… I hope whatever’s going on with you is alright, and that you’re alright, and that everything is fine with you and could you please call me back because I think something is _happening_ to me and… “ The phone made an odd noise and disconnected him before he could erase the recording and start over. He considered calling again to try and leave a corrective message, and maybe, a little, to re-listen to Cecil’s recorded message again, because his voice was somehow able to raise his heart rate and calm his nerves, which seemed medically unlikely, to say the least. 

Carlos really needed to take a blood sample, to run some tests on himself. He wasn’t a biologist or a medical doctor, but you ended up a bit of a Scientist-of-all-trades in Night Vale, out of necessity, and it was amazing what skills you could pick up through YouTube videos. The feeling of satisfaction he’d gotten when he’d removed his own regrown appendix a couple of months ago, as well as the fact that he had no longer been dying of appendicitis, had been truly rewarding. But his hands were in no fit state to seek a vein or perform a draw, he was currently the only scientist here, and no one went to Night Vale General Hospital if they could otherwise escape it.

He called the station number, but the phone just made a noise like fingernails on a chalkboard and then began oozing a mustard yellow goo out of the headphone and charging ports. 

...He needed to head to the radio station to try and talk to Cecil in person.

But he could hardly go over there now in the state he was in, which was somehow still rather desperately aroused. His choices, clearly, were to masturbate to relieve himself, or attempt to will it down on his own by creating unfavourable conditions, such as a cold shower. He decided, purely in the interest of efficacy, to try the former. Though no one was present in the lab, he still headed for the bathroom. 

It was with no style and less finesse he shoved his clothing out of the way to begin jerking himself off. When he came a few moments later, the orgasm was more perfunctory than pleasurable, but if his thoughts and mutterings featured a certain community fixture, that was between him and the Sheriff’s Secret Police officer currently listening in, who was far too polite to say anything about it.

Carlos cleaned himself quickly before realising that between the regurgitation, and the eating, and the period of unconsciousness, and the… other things, it might be best to take a quick shower and change into fresh clothes before going to Cecil the radio station. The shower couldn’t do anything for the redness of his sclera or his slightly pasty skin tone, and he just shoved his hair into a low ponytail instead of drying it properly, but he did feel more himself afterwards. 

He threw on his jeans and last clean t-shirt (“Go ‘Pods”). He held up one lab coat, then another, trying to decide if there was actually any difference between them, “Quit stalling, already,” a voice called out from the window, “And go with the left one.”

He was not stalling. He was just… not being hasty. A Scientist was never hasty. There was no reason, obviously, for his heart rate to remain elevated, for his palms to be sweaty, for his stomach to be uneasy in a way unconnected with his earlier gastrointestinal distress, for him to be fighting the urge to check his appearance in passing reflective surfaces as he made his way to the radio station.

The town was as quiet as before, which at least meant no traffic. Only one helicopter, one of the ones with a complex mural of a diving bird of prey, patrolled the robin’s egg blue sky.

The station’s doors, solid bloodstone carved with bas relief glyphs that seemed to start writhing if stared at for more than a few seconds and which showed up as black voids in photographs, were unlocked, and swung forward easily at his touch. The interior, too, looked much as it had on Carlos’ previous visits; carpet threadbare in places and stained with unidentifiable substances in others, and with a general air not of neglect but of constant usage and a low budget for facilities maintenance -- honestly, it had always made Carlos feel very much at home, reminding him of many of the facilities he’d worked in over the years. Really, the only noticeable difference today was a slight scent of… something unfamiliar. It smelled a bit like roasting green chiles, in a completely dissimilar to the aroma of roasting green chiles sort of way. It smelled _lovely,_ even though that was a completely subjective and biased descriptor, thus rendering it useless for data collection. He wanted to bury his face in it.

He passed the entrance desk that he’d never seen anyone at to continue down the hallway towards Cecil’s booth. Which he wasn’t at, obviously, but it seemed like as good a starting point as any. 

Cecil wasn’t there. However, though the booth and soundboards were all apparently unattended, Carlos’ hypothalamus was telling him that there was someone or something there, just the same. He didn’t linger.

The Staff Break Room and Memorial to Fallen Interns was just around the corner. As he pushed that door open he heard the thud of something hitting the floor.

“Faceless Uncaring Void you startled me!” the woman said, barely glancing at him as she dabbed at the coffee stain across the front of her “NVCR Intern” shirt with a paper towel. “I was worried you were Station Management for a minute there, though of course they’re hiding right now and besides, according to the bathroom graffiti you can tell when they’re coming by the spontaneous nosebleeds.

“Anyway, you shouldn’t be here right now, it’s very dangerous, Mr…” her voice trailed off as she finally looked up at him. “Scientist! You’re _him_ With the hair.”

“That’s not…I mean…” Carlos sighed. Not important right now. Not compared to finding Cecil or figuring out where that smell was coming from. “Hi, yes. I’m him. I’m here to see Cecil?”

“Of course you are,” she said, a dreamy expression in her dark eyes. “Oh, this is so _romantic._ He said you weren’t coming, that he’d just be spending it alone like usual, but you’re _here_ … oh, moments like these make the internship really seem worthwhile even with the ninety-two percent fatality rate, you know?” She sniffed the air. “He never mentioned how good you smell. Is that a body wash or just some sort of natural pheromones, it smells just like… ”

“Ninety-two percent?” Carlos interrupted. Which, okay, was a little unfair, considering the survival rate of his scientists. 

“I just hit my one month mark, a lot of the interns don’t even reach _that_ ,” Monica said proudly. “I got lucky, starting right before the Ides. Once Cecil was locked up it’s basically a one week paid vacation at the station.” She misinterpreted his expression of concern, adding, “Oh, don’t worry, he could get out if he _really_ wanted to, that’s why Station Management won’t leave their offices, even they know better than to mess with him right now. As does everyone else, he gets kinda territorial, you know? So this is actually the safest place in town to be right now, if you’re not Chosen.”

Carlos sniffed the air again. He could swear the scent was getting stronger, but it still didn’t seem to have a clear directional origin. “Do you smell it? That smell, it’s… scientifically indescribable.” 

A low rumbling noise filled the station. Carlos closed his eyes, letting it wash over him. It was oddly soothing, as though they were atop a giant cat as it purred. He reopened them only to see that Monica had gone a bit pale. “That’s… I… should probably not be distracting you right now. Or talking to you. You should go.”

He should go. 

“Cecil,” he swallowed, throat dry. “Where?”

Monica took a careful step backwards, and then another one. “Down the stairs on the left, first door, covered with chains and deadbolts and spraypainted runes, can’t miss it.”

“Should you, uhm... should you lock up after me?” 

Only the wall at her back was stopping Monica from moving further away from him. “Oh, now that _you’re_ here, leaving will be the last thing on his mind. Have fun!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....And Carlos managed to drag this out for yet another chapter. Sometimes, I despair of that man. Next Chapter: We finally get to Cecil! Also, tentacles. These two things are not unconnected. Actually they're really really connected. Physically.
> 
> Much love to my Intern Monica, and to all those who have thus far left comments or kudos on this story so far.
> 
> I can be found on tumblr at bamfinacuddlyjumper.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, Welcome to Night Vale. Where tentacle sex is not-not-canon, and my 'ship _actually is._ Neat!
> 
> As ever, I can be found on Tumblr under bamfinacuddlyjumper.


End file.
